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She swallows audibly. “Give me a moment to process.”

“No.”

“Why not?” She takes another step back for each one I take forward. “Please let me… I can’t adjust this fast.”

I don’t stop until she’s pressed herself against the wall, which she realizes with a startled yelp. Then I wrap one arm around her and pull her into my chest. Her body is warm against mine, smaller than I remember.

“You don’t get to have space from me,” I rasp. “If you have questions, ask them. But I’m not going to leave you alone to make up scenarios in your head.”

“How can I make anything up when I don’t even know what happened?” she challenges in a small voice. When I don’t answer, she sighs. “Why was he bleeding?”

“Because I punched him,” I reply matter-of-factly.

“Why?”

“He scared you.”

“So you did it for me?”

I shake my head. “No. That was definitely for me,” I clarify. “No one touches what’s mine, and you’re my wife.”

“But he didn’t touch me,” she argues.

“And that’s why he’s still breathing.”

She makes a frustrated sound. “So you’re going to beat up anyone who does something you don’t like?”

I frown at her. “He acted like you were here for him. Like he had a right to you—”

“Exactly,” she interrupts, throwing her hands up in frustration. “Whatever he did, he did it to me. So shouldn’t I be the one who gets to decide if he needs to be… punched?”

I laugh darkly. “My sweet, innocent wife. No, that’s not how it works.” I wrap a lock of her hair around my index finger. “I asked if you accepted his apology, and if you’d said no, I would have killed him. However, you said yes. So now he gets to live. So you had a say.”

“That’s not…” Pausing, she looks away. “That’s insane.”

I tip her chin up with my thumb and briefly press my lips to hers in a small kiss. Her lips are soft, yielding, and she kisses me back—not eagerly or passionately, but enough to let me know she’s present.

When I pull away, her eyes are closed. She opens them slowly.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

Her brow furrows. “For hitting him?”

“No.” I keep my hand on her chin, thumb brushing the corner of her mouth. “For letting him be here. For letting anyone be here who could frighten you.”

I can see her working through it, the same way I watched Harry dig his grave—except Kira’s building something, not destroying it.

“I was worried,” she says finally. “When I told Vinny, I thought I’d get in trouble.”

The words land differently than anything else she could have said. They settle in my chest like something cold and heavy. Not anger. Something worse.

“You don’t get in trouble because someone else fucks up,” I say. “That’s not how this works.”

“Thank you,” she murmurs.

While holding her, I explain that I’ll change the access to the penthouse so she’ll only see the staff, Gio, and Vinny around. “I’ll even make sure most of my meetings are downtown,” I add.

“Why?” she asks. Though the question irks me, it doesn’t feel like she’s asking to be difficult.